COVID-19 presents new and unique challenges for all business, and Construction hasn't escaped it's impact. It's putting incredible strain on businesses, no matter if you're a GC, Sub or Sole Trader, many of us are wondering how we'll get through this crisis.
The imperative is to figure out how to get the industry moving again without risking the lives of the very people at the core, the workers on site, and their families.
This is the challenge our customers have been wrestling with over recent weeks, and to be completely honest, it had us scratching our heads. I'd love to tell you about some amazing leadership we showed here, but the reality is that we only realised we could have an impact when we started asking our customers what they were doing about the crisis.
Let's take Daily Health Checks / Wellness Checks for example, they're new to most of us, and have been difficult to implement on the jobs that are open. Only this morning I was talking to a Superintendent who told me about Subs having to queue for over an hour to access site, everyday. Queues I might add that don't help with social distancing. Furthermore, the administrative burden faced by Superintendents trying to manage the pandemic is, well, to use a word we've all heard a lot recently... unprecedented.
We felt technology needed to step up and help out
These processes are critical in keeping workers safe, and in enabling the industry to get moving again, but we felt technology needed to step up and help out, so we started collaborating with a few clients to see what we could do.
The first result of that collaboration is Health Survey Bot which we'll be releasing within days. We believe it will have a dramatic impact on the ability to keep sites open by automating Health Checks over SMS. Nyfty will actually conduct the survey, notify superintendents of any issues and save the result to Procore's Inspections Tool whilst providing live updates in the Daily Log.
We don't have all the answers, but through this collaboration we can help with some aspects of re-opening constructions sites, and help keep them open over the coming months of turbulence.
Reopen and stay open tools for Procore (so far):
Health Survey Bot - Conducts Daily Health Surveys for you
Inspections Bot - Chases people to do their Inspections
Broadcast Bot - Simple site wide announcements tool
Manpower Bot - Remotely collects Manpower Logs for you
We're continuing to collaborate with our customers to solve the new challenges being presented, and just in the last 24 hours have been collaborating on two more Bots that could have a transformative impact on the industry.
So what can you do?
You can get involved, test the Bots on your jobs, tell us about your pain points, and collaborate with us to find solutions. We won't be able to solve everything, but between you, us and the wider construction technology family I know we can do amazing things, and I'm sure we're all willing to do our bit.